


Waxing Black?

by indulgentDaemon



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Angst and Feels, Other, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Silly mistake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-11 01:11:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7869673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indulgentDaemon/pseuds/indulgentDaemon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kanaya's done something silly, and Karkat is there to reassure her that no, she's not a horrible troll, she just made a mistake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waxing Black?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Apotheocrisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apotheocrisy/gifts).



It had been way too fucking long since Karkat had last used his husktop and the age was showing. One could perhaps also point to how it had been roughly thrown into a storage cubicle together with a large amount of other moderately useless accessories once things had settled down, but surely the cause of its dilapidated state of being was, first and foremost, age. He had never thought he’d needed to use it again, hence the poor treatment, but it struck him as he plugged in the ancient electrical sockets (after fiddling with an adapter for a good ten minutes trying to figure out how to set it to Alternian voltage amidst a steady stream of maledictions and profanities, both real and made up on the spot) how much he’d missed the old thing.

Sure, it was by all means loads slower than anything they were using now, post-English, but it had a kind of reassuring weight and realness about it. Interfacing these days was a seamless, ever-present experience thanks to the Alchemiters, and Karkat missed the good old days of typing furiously on a keyboard to get his very thought-out and reasonable points across.

Naturally he hadn’t brought the old thing out just to wax reminiscence over the good old days, but rather he had a purpose and a reason for crawling to the depths of his over-filled storage compartment. Darling Kanaya.

She’d withdrawn from everyone else a few days ago and no one had known why. Rose had looked a bit guilty, but also concerned as none of her attempts of approachment had proven fruitful. Kanaya had not given a reason why; in fact, she had not replied at all. Strange behavior from the otherwise so grandiloquent troll.

It had been Terezi, who surprisingly had kept some of her old equipment around for mysterious and sinister purposes, who pointed out that she’d seen Kanaya on Trollian, but only very briefly. She’d gone offline before the libra had been able to approach her, and naturally it had fallen on Karkat, master Moirail and Kanaya’s closest friend, to solve the situation.

Or at least that’s what they’d said as the other trolls had shuffled the problem onto him. It almost seemed like they were embarrassed about it all and they had assumed that someone who also had a human in their quadrant would be more apt at resolving the issue… Ignoring the fact that humans (as well as chess-people) in quadrants wasn’t exactly premium these days in their ever-more tangled romantic shenanigans. Also, this was encroaching a little too far into the Auspicitism, if the problem was indeed romantic. Dave didn’t know Rose that well, but for now he was more intent on getting this self-destructive isolation dealt with.

So there he was, plugging his old equipment in, mentally going through what he was going to say to the hermited jade-blood once he came online. So far, he’d gone through roughly sixty different scenarios and, unfortunately, not one of them had ended up resolved in a satisfying manner, despite having mentally backtracked and picked different routes to see if that would be more successful. Maybe that was because he kept projecting his own sordid personality onto Kanaya’s and, unfortunately for Karkat, he was his own worst enemy.

The mutant troll hadn’t grown much in the time since their last and fateful encounter with lord English, but he had let his hair grow out into a scraggly kind of mullet that he kept tied up in a ponytail. Literally no one, including Karkat himself, liked it but then he and Dave had made a bet and… well, guess who lost. His irises were already filling in with red, however, and had they still been back on Alternia his culling, if it hadn’t already happened, would surely be imminent by now. Some of his grub fat had been shedded too, but he was still by far the shortest of the guys he’d spent all that time on the meteor with. And let’s not get started with that beanpole Dave...

His continuously darkening train of thought was interrupted as the computer lit up with the old familiar hum. He had finished plugging it in and as the power switch depressed the various knicknacks and doodads inside booted up. Despite its age and apparent damage, it was still running. So that was a start. Thank God he didn’t have to attempt to fucking fix anything. Mentally patting himself on the back for constantly undermining his own achievements and skills, Karkat typed in the unnecessarily long and cryptic password that he used for pretty much everything. In order to not feel like a complete computer illiterate he congratulated himself on the fact that at least he wasn’t using a favorite pet’s name or the maiden name of his lusus or something. A downright hacker, he was.

As Trollian loaded up the list of usernames came up, all of them offline. It sent a chill of discomfort down his back as he saw names of old friends that he’d almost forgotten on there again, as if nothing had happened since they all started playing that game. Ever since they finally beat it, the dream bubbles had just… disappeared, and they had all moved on with their lives.  
To distract himself from thinking too much about it, he double-clicked on grimAuxiliatrix, offline, and performed the cardinal sin of internet communication. The surefire way to know if someone was just pretending to be offline was to send them a message; if she was, in fact, away, the message would bounce back or otherwise indicate that it hadn’t been received. But if she was hiding, she’d still get it. Truly a terrible thing to do, and Netiquette experts around this new world of theirs collectively tut-tutted with their finger raised, but Karkat was a loose cannon. He had a mission to do, mutually agreed rules of conduct and vague discomfort be damned!

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling grimAuxiliatrix [GA] –

CG: I KNOW YOU’RE THERE SO LET’S SKIP THE ENTIRE POINTLESS CHARADE OF ME TRYING TO GET YOU TO TALK AND YOU SLOWLY HAVING YOUR RESISTANCE BEATEN DOWN UNTIL YOU CAN’T BEAR READING MY INCREASINGLY FRANTIC ARGUMENTS FOR WHY THIS ENTIRE THING IS A BAD IDEA AND YOU REPLY IN A FLIPPANT KIND OF MISDIRECTING WAY THAT MOMENTARILY CATCHES ME OFF GUARD.  
GA: What Thing  
CG: WHOA THAT WAS FAST.  
CG: I MEAN.  
CG: YOU KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.  
GA: Im Afraid I Dont  
CG: THIS THING.  
CG: THE “Im Not Talking To Anyone For Mysterious And Annoyingly Inscrutable Reasons”.  
CG: THAT THING.  
GA: Im Just Taking A Break Karkat That Is All This Is  
GA: You Yourself Have Taken A Few Every Now And Then Unless Im Mistaken  
CG: YEAH FOR A GRAND TOTAL OF TWO DAYS SINCE WE SETTLED DOWN. DUE TO SICKNESS.  
CG: YOU'VE BEEN AWOL FOR THREE DAYS STRAIGHT AND YOU HAVEN'T LET SLIP ONE GRUBFUCK CLUE AS TO WHY.  
CG: THIS IS UNLIKE YOUR USUAL CALCULATED SHENANIGANS AND YOU ARE ACTING IN A WAY THAT, IF I MAY QUOTE, IS "Puzzling".  
CG: I'M PRETTY SURE YOU'VE USED THAT WORD BEFORE.  
CG: IN FACT IF I GO SCOUR OUR OLD LOGS I’M SURE I WILL FIND THAT IT IS A WORD THAT YOU'VE USED QUITE OFTEN AND WITH, DARE I SAY IT, NIGH-ON OBSESSION AT TIMES.  
CG: AND FAR BE IT FOR ME TO PRESUME BASED ON PREVIOUS EXPERIENCES,  
CG: BUT I WILL, WITH ABANDON,  
CG: AND MY PRESUMPTION IS THAT ONCE MORE YOU HAVE FOUND YOURSELF TANGLED IN THE COMPLICATED AND, HONESTLY, AT TIMES COMPLETE BULLSHIT ROMANTIC CLUSTERFUCK THAT IS OUR MUTUAL EXISTENCE ON THIS FORSAKEN MATERIAL PLANE OF SUCK.  
CG: SO WHO IS IT?  
CG: WHO'S BEEN ON YOUR MIND?  
GA: Its Not Like That Karkat And Honestly Im A Little Upset That You Would Assume Anything Like It  
CG: LOOK, WE'RE TROLLS.  
CG: WE PRETTY MUCH BUILT OUR ENTIRE MALFUNCTIONING SOCIETY AROUND UNNECESSARILY COMPLICATED ROMANTIC NONSENSE.  
CG: AND I, AS IT HAPPENS TO BE, IS AN UNDERRATED AS FUCK EXPERT ON THESE MATTERS, AS YOU MOST LIKELY HAVE ASSURED ME IN THE PAST.  
CG: IT'S A GODDAMNED MIRACLE THAT WE'RE STILL NOT FUCKING AROUND TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHOEVER IS DESTINED TO FILL PAILS WITH US BEFORE THE IMPERIAL DRONES COME AROUND AND DECIDE WE HAVEN'T FILLED OUR QUOTA AND IT'S OFF TO THE OLD CULLING BLOCK.  
CG: AND BY CULLING BLOCK I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THAT SHORT-LIVED BUT MODERATELY INTERESTING SHOW THAT WE ALL GOT HOOKED ON.  
CG: YOU KNOW THE ONE.  
CG: WHERE THEY HAD ALL THESE ASSHOLES FROM ALL OVER THE SPECTRUM TRYING TO LIVE TOGETHER AND NOT GO BUMFUCK INSANE FROM THE LACK OF SOPOR SLIME AND/OR ENTERTAINMENT.  
CG: NOW THAT I THINK ABOUT IT THAT WAS ALL KINDS OF FUCKED UP.  
GA: Karkat I Dont Know How To Convince You But There Is Nothing Wrong  
CG: SPOKEN BY SOMEONE WHO IS TRYING TO HIDE SOMETHING.  
CG: SPILL THE BEANS, MARYAM, AND I WILL CLEAN THEM UP AND DISPOSE OF THEM IN THE LOAD GAPER ONCE WE HAVE DISSECTED EXACTLY HOW THESE BEANS ARE BAD FOR YOU AND YOU SHOULD PROBABLY AVOID THEM OR AT LEAST COOK THEM TO MAKE THEM MORE DIGESTABLE.  
CG: WHAT I'M SAYING IS THAT THEY WILL UNAVOIDABLY END UP IN THE LOAD GAPER.  
GA: Can We Please Not Have This Conversation  
GA: I Have Already Made Enough Of A Fool Out Of Myself And Id Rather Not Get Into A Lengthy Spiel About How Self Pitying I Am Right Now  
GA: It Is Nothing Personal And I Do Appreciate Your Well Meaning Attempts At Easing My Mind But Im Afraid That I Have Acted In A Way That Has Permanently Marred An Otherwise Healthy And Thriving Red Relationship  
CG: WHAT DID YOU DO?  
GA: I Would Rather Not Say But It Should Sate Your Friendy But Incessant Curiosity That I Am Thoroughly Embarrassed And I Messed Up Royally  
CG: HOOO BOY.  
CG: ALRIGHT.  
CG: LET ME JUST POSITION THIS CHAIR IN THE PROPER BACKWARDS WAY TO CONVEY A HUMBLE AND NON THREATENING PRESENCE DURING OUR CONVERSATION.  
GA: What Are You Talking About  
CG: WE ARE GOING TO HAVE A SINCERE AND THOROUGH HEART TO HEART ABOUT THIS AND THAT REQUIRES ME TO EXUDE AN AURA OF RELIABILITY. BELIEVE ME, IT WORKS.  
GA: I Dont Really Care About How You Sit Or What You Sit On But  
CG: YEAH?  
CG: (also i'm super glad that there's at least some people out there who can appreciate the fine art of attentive posturing)  
GA: Were Not Even In The Same Room So Why Would It Matter  
CG: ALRIGHT FORGET MY PREVIOUS SENTENCE.  
CG: NO.  
CG: IN FACT, I DEMAND THAT YOU LET ME INTO YOUR SHAME SPHERE,  
CG: OR CUBE OR WHATEVER,  
CG: AND WE HAVE AN ACTUAL FACE TO FACE ABOUT THIS.  
GA: Alright  
GA: Since There Is Clearly No Convincing You Otherwise I suppose It Might Be Worth A Shot  
GA: But Please Dont Tell Or Bring Anyone Else  
GA: This Shame Is Not Something I Wish To Share With The Rest Of Our Mutual Friends and Acquaintances  
CG: I WILL BRING THE ICE CREAM.  
CG: I GUARANTEE CHOCOLATE ICE CREAM HAS A NINETY NINE POINT NINE PERCENT SUCCESS RATE IN OPENING UP EVEN THE WORST EMOTIONAL KNOT FOR A THOROUGH CHECK-UP.

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] has stopped trolling grimAuxiliatrix [GA] –

GA: But Im Not Sure It Will Be Worth Your Time Oh You Have Already Left  
GA: Well Then  
GA: In Case You Log In Again In A Little Bit To Ask Me Where Im Staying It Is At The Midnight Pearl Motel  
GA: Room 314

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling grimAuxiliatrix [GA] –

CG: OH.  
CG: THANKS.

\-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] has stopped trolling grimAuxiliatrix [GA] –

In a way it was a relief that Karkat hadn’t taken no for an answer. The more Kanaya had been forced to reflect on the events of a few days ago and the subsequent fallout from it, the more she realized how silly she had acted. She’d known Rose for a long time now, they’d been… intimate long enough that a small hitch like this shouldn’t… It just didn’t make sense for her to carry a grudge…

Yet the worry kept gnawing at her, and her self-imposed isolation hadn’t made things easier, in fact the lack of contact with everyone else had her concocting nightmarish scenarios in which Rose did everything from breaking up with her to simply just leaving, never coming back. Being isolated like this just wasn’t good for her, it played too much into past experiences and… she didn’t have her lusus to keep her company any more. She ran an errant hand through her frizzled hair, realizing with horror that she hadn’t cared for herself during the entire three days she’d spent cooped up. She was a mess!

Unlike their former team-leader, Kanaya had grown quite a lot in the last few years, having had a growth-spurt just around the time they established their new city. She’d already been kind of lanky, but she’d outgrown everyone, including Vriska, which had been awkward, but not too bad since she was already good at making clothes. Had she not, she suspected she might have had a different outlook on things. Her girlfriend, Rose (well, let’s just HOPE she still was her girlfriend after all this…) was her polar opposite; where Kanaya was tall and slim with broad shoulders and narrow hips, Rose was short and curvy with hips to die for. A faint, jade blush spread on her cheeks as she thought about how much she adored the human and her beauty. And it was pure joy making clothes for both of them, just…

She shook her head as she banished the happy, yet strangely bitter memories from her mind. There was no time to dwell in the past, she needed to get clean, to get presentable before her crabby friend came over to try to talk her out of this. She welcomed his attempts, but she doubted he’d succeed in lifting this morose veil that hung over her heart.

Showering was a quick affair, it left too much time to dwell on things and she sooner skipped out, dried up quickly and handily applied her make up, doing so without looking in the fogged-up bathroom mirror. Being a rainbow drinker, she had no reflection, but that had become so routine she didn’t even think about it. All she needed was a brief glance in the mirror to see if she’d smudged anything, noting that despite her state of mind she was still flawless (or perhaps it WAS because of it. She had read somewhere that many depressed individuals considered make-up their battle armor, the shield to hide their emotions, and she was wont to agree), and then she was ready.

Or… well… as ready as she could be. Unwanted images of the catastrophic evening flashed before her eyes and she fought back her tears. How could she have known? Why hadn’t she known? She had spent long enough time around the two that she shouldn’t have made that mistake, yet… she supposed some instincts died hard, but a faux pas like this, how would she ever recover?

She was dragged out of her ennui by the brief RAP PAP PAP on the door of the motel. She hurried over and pulled the chain off the lock, glancing outside. Of course it was Karkat, she should have recognized the knock.

\---

Well, she looked… messed up. That was the first word that popped into his head as Karkat stepped inside. He could tell how bad she was feeling, her eyelashes had spattered tiny flecks of mascara on her skin, her lipstick was at times not entirely symmetric and Karkat barely dared to look at her eyeliner, surely the wings were a little too sharp for her facial features.

“Okay, first of all, you look amazing, Kanaya.” He wasn’t a very good liar, but he hoped she’d appreciate it anyway, “I love what you’ve done with hair, really going for a more natural look, huh? I dig it!”

“Yes, well, I just got out of the rinsing cubic… the shower, so I haven’t really had time to…”

Kanaya sort of hugged her arm awkwardly and Karkat’s eyes widened in shame before he just sort of stormed inside with loud footsteps, almost knocking a particularly ugly lamp over. It was obvious he was feeling just about as embarrassed about it as she was, she’d figured out all his little cues a long time ago.

“Awesome! Alright, where are your chairs?” 

He spotted one before she could direct him to them and he swiftly turned it around with the flick of a wrist, sat down, tossed the bag with two gallon-sized tubs of premium chocolate ice cream onto the bag and rested his arms on the back of the chair in what could only be described as the most relaxed and confidence-inducing position imaginable. It truly sent a wave of relaxation through her and she sat down as well, on the bed, crossing her arms and trying to not give him the look that said “Alright, I’m ready.”

He gave her a long, stern look, clearly not intent on being the next one to speak. Finally, feeling as if the pressure was like a blowtorch under her feet, she opened up. She had to tell him what she’d done, she couldn’t keep it inside herself any longer.

“As… as you probably know, Rose and I have been… dating for some time.”

To his credit, Karkat didn’t comment on this and he even managed not to roll his eyes at her ‘confession’.

“And… I thought it prudent to ensure that my matesprit’s needs were, ah… fulfilled. As is only proper, building a good and healthy mutual coexistence… I mean…” She was dancing around the problem, but the counselor-to-be had seen enough to know that there was nothing to gain from pushing the issue too urgently.

“And… I… well, I always knew that Dave and Rose were, well… close, in lack of better words.” Karkat froze, but said and did nothing. She clearly had his full at… no, 110% of his attention, even more than full. “Much more so than with John and Jade, both in appearance and, well, their personalities are complimentary, after all…”

Kanaya began to fiddle awkwardly with her fingers. “And… perhaps I may have too hastily assumed that… there was something there more than friendship…”

“Alright, wait,” Karkat held up a hand, “I’m terribly sorry for interrupting, in fact it’s literally the worst thing imaginable and I should be flayed upon a barren rock for doing it, but… you do know that me and Dave are dating, correct?”

Kanaya nodded, “Of course! Yes, well, certainly I’ve known that for a long time, you are hardly -subtle- about it.” He gave her a look, “But… and you said it yourself, our… I mean, we trolls, we have… our view on romance isn’t entirely... “

Karkat’s jaw dropped about half a foot before he caught himself. She couldn’t have…? Noooo…

“And, well, I presumed that perhaps there was… ahh… the spark of… a caliginous… interest. So… I… set up a meeting, uhm, a… well, I thought perhaps it would be prudent if I… nudged it… in the right direction.”

“...And how did they react?”

“Well, they… didn’t seem to realize my intention at first, and Rose was… surprisingly terse about the whole thing, wondering why Dave was there to, as she said ‘be a third wheel’.”

“You… told her, didn’t you?”

Kanaya’s cheek went jade as she nodded, “Yes… Yes I did, after things got too awkward, and… Oh, Karkat, I’m such a fool. I should have realized! We studied them for so long before, I’ve been with Rose for even longer, how did I… she…” It took her a few moments to calm her breathing, droplets of tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “She left, upset at me, quite… quite unlike her, and Dave he… well, he didn’t seem quite as… disgruntled, but he told me they were… how did he put it… ‘related’?”

Karkat’s jaw had relocated itself to its proper place, and he was frowning deeply, an expression that made his jade-blooded friend stop in her retelling, giving him a nervous look.

“I… uhm…” he started, clearly trying to put his thoughts into words, “I… thought you knew that.”

“Well, I mean… I guess?! In a sense aren’t we all!?” She lifted the lid on what had been bothering her. They had all been made in the same kind of genetic slurry as the eight humans, that didn’t mean… after all, normal procreation was like that, but just on a much larger scale.

“Being related means you’re close, not just genetically but also… socially?” Dave had explained this to Karkat once, but he’d already drawn similar conclusions from his conversations with John, “sort of like… you and your lusus. It’s just considered… strange.” Karkat hadn’t fully understood it until that comparison was made. Sure, he still didn’t get it entirely (he found it hard to see how you could compare a different species entirely to someone who looked like you…), but he’d figured everyone had their taboos and hang-ups. “They are as close to… what did they call it… siblings, as you can be, so it would be… really fucked up if they were together.”

Kanaya nodded. She knew, of course, had probably already known even before she set the whole thing in motion, but… even though she had been with humans for so long, with Rose for so long, the old way of thinking, the quadrants, they were so ingrained in her mind. She had thought that maybe if Rose had someone to bounce her more… negative emotions on, her relationship with the Virgo would be more positive, better than it already was. It had been arrogant, and nosy.

She felt hot tears of shame run rivulets down her cheeks and she covered her face with a sleeve, not caring that she was smudging out her carefully applied battle armor.

“H-hey, hey c’mon Kanaya,” Karkat got up from his chair, settling down next to her, the cold tubs of ice cream strategically rolling down to rest against his rear. Perfect comedic timing. “It’s not so bad! Look, let me tell you something.”

She glanced at him but didn’t stop crying, shaking softly as she felt like the worst troll in the world.

“Let me tell you exactly what Rose told me when they all asked me to come drag you out.”

That made her stop. She hadn’t realized he had been sent there by the others.

“She told me that: ‘while I did perhaps not appreciate the execution, the intention was sweet, caring and most of all, very her. Tell Kanaya that if she’s worried about me, it’s better to ask’. And let’s be honest here,” Karkat prodded her side, chuckling slightly, “Not even I would’ve tried to pull a stunt like that. What the ever loving fuck had you thinking that her and DAVE of all people would be waxing black for each other?”

Kanaya hiccoughed, then laughed a little herself. It was pretty stupid, after all. “Well… the way they bantered, one-upped each other whenever they spoke, pranks… I assumed it just hadn’t had the chance to blossom yet and… well, I thought to help it along.”

“I don’t blame you, those two have a weird relationship, even by our standards.” Karkat grinned and lifted the bag up, popping open one of the tubs and offering it to her. “Let’s hope this rathole has spoons and pay-per-view, there’s an episode on Thresh Prince that is almost exactly this way.”

Kanaya took the gallon-sized tub of ice cream and looked down on its half-melted content. She sniffled, sighed and then nodded, “So… I’m not a terrible person who should mind her own business?”

“Nah, you’re not that bad.”


End file.
